BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT EXPERT

There is never enough time in a day and once the day has gone, its gone! Don’t forget “Prime Time” – the time when prospects, clients and customers are most likely to be available and receptive. This will vary from industry to industry, market to market, job to job.

If you have a “sell / do” role – lawyers, CPAs, consultants, sales engineers – put time aside that is only for selling. Just because its the beginning of the month, don’t fool yourself, watch out for the time bandits that steal your business development and sales time. You should NEVER be doing anything except pro-active sales activity in Prime Time.

Don’t forget to ask for the order! Do I hear you laughing? You would be surprised how many people make the sales presentation and don’t ask for the order. Prospects don’t “close” themselves. Whatever you are selling – products, professional services, consultancy – you have to ask for the order. Don’t leave it to chance, plan your close in advance. How are you going to ask for the order, what will your close be, have you got the answers to objections ready? We all plan opening the sale, we rarely plan how we are going to ask for the business.

The dictionary defines value as “……the worth of something, compared to something else…..”. This is a great definition when you are selling, just because we think what we sell delivers benefits, it doesn’t mean the customer does. What is of value to one customer is not necessarily of value to another. Your USP, the benefits you [possibly] deliver, your differentiaters, are all meaningless if they are not “of value” to your prospects, clients and customers. Ask questions about what the customer values, pitch only the capabilities of your product, service, profession that delivers value to that customer. If what you have on offer is not of benefit, don’t present it!

How many sales visits do you make where YOU do all the talking? Especially on a first appointment, ask open questions – how, what, why, where, when, who – and then listen. Open questions make the customer talk, get descriptive answers and let you uncover their needs easily. Closed questions – will you, would you, do you, did you and have you – typically get “yes” or “no” answers and the sales visit quickly degenerates into an interrogation. The rapport breaks down, you make your pitch too early and before you really understand the customer’s needs, you lose the order and the customer misses out on the benefits you could have delivered.

Having been in the international sales and marketing business for over 30 years I am beginning to feel like a bit of dinsosaur when it comes to all this social networking, especially as its use is now having considerbale commercial ramifications.

I can remember avoiding using and reply to SMS messages for as long as I could before finally caving in – dinosaur behaviour again. I guess I have avoided social networking for as long as a can.

And yet I was a very early adopter of email, I can remember when our email addresses were a compuserve number. I was using email in 1983 and when I showed it to one customer he said – great solution where’s the problem?

Its not that I am technophobe – I love technology but social networking, facebook, myspace, blogging has me scratching my head. I dont know what I dont know, how do I get started, how do I make sure I dont get left behind. I know I have to network for business but now it seems I have to social network for business – where will I find the time to do the business!

I love sales, I love helping sales people – especially people just starting out. Sales is not a black art, sales is a process. Yes you need a personality but you also need some sales techniques too. So if you have a sales question let me know, if you have a sales situation and you want some tips – let me know, gotta question you think is silly – the only dumb questions are the one’s you don’t ask. I don’t have the answer to everything but I do bring 30 years sales experience to the party and if I don’t have an answer – I usually “know a man that can”.